Search Results: LGBTQ

When I watch the video 'How women become gay', it hurts. Not because of the anti-gay content, but because it uses language about God's love, the type of religious language I grew up with, to sneak past my defenses. For a moment, despite years of learning to accept myself, I waver.

It's 11.30 on a weeknight. I'm on the train, coming home from catching up with my friends. I'm on the phone with one of them as I move to the doors. 'Yeah, I'm right to walk home,' I tell my worried friend. 'The train's pulling up the station now.' I said that too loudly. I glance behind me and there are two men standing there.

The number of medals available to men and women was equal. In this respect the games were better than the cultural norms of some of the competing countries. Integration of disabled athletes was also significant. Against this generally positive background the media persisted in an approach which was needlessly one-eyed.

In the ensuing debate, we shouldn't let ourselves forget that this postal vote never should have happened in the first place, and nothing like this should happen again to any minority group. The public voting yes or no on human rights is not what democracy looks like.

Governments can't legislate against hatred and intolerance. A friend stated on Facebook that 'No law can change human biology. No law can make natural what is unnatural.' Such rhetoric is a reminder that the realm of human rights is still a bloody battlefield in which certain groups continue to proclaim superiority over others.

During the month of Muharram, the No message was being handed out at mosques and spoken from the pulpits. Yet many Muslims voted Yes not because we wanted to reinvent the Islamic idea of marriage, but because the scriptures teach that we should stand up for justice even if it goes against our families and ourselves.

In the ensuing debate, we shouldn't let ourselves forget that this postal vote never should have happened in the first place, and nothing like this should happen again to any minority group. The public voting yes or no on human rights is not what democracy looks like.

In the current climate, minorities and oppressed communities are branded as 'divisive' when attention is drawn to the void which exists between those with power and those without. This allegation stands firmly on the understanding that our 'unified strength' against a common enemy will bring about the change we so passionately fight for. But often the assumption is that all parties are to unify with the majority, that those of lesser power should fight for equality in a way that those in power see fit.

A recent Screen Australia report determined only 5 per cent of characters in Australian TV dramas could be identified as LGBTQI; less than half the proportion of real-world queer individuals in Australia. Media products are inherently normative, legitimising identities and lived realities through visibility. This is important, given the continuing debates surrounding marriage equality and the pervasiveness of homophobia, the result of which was seen in the suicide of 13-year-old Tyrone Unsworth.

In political commentary liberal politics and identity politics are often presented as polar opposites. For supporters of liberal politics the relationship between the two is one between virtue and vice, rationality and emotion, the wise against the mob. I believe that the relationship is more complex, that identity politics shares the same stunted assumptions about personal and national identity as liberal politics, sees the self-interest of the latter, and wants to despoil it.

Who owns a cultural object? Who has the right to determine cultural values? And how can public institutions exercise cultural responsibility? It's a timely set of questions as we consider the implications of the National Gallery of Australia's return of ancient Indian sculptures, the British Museum's refusal to return Indigenous objects, or Lionel Shriver's rejection of minority cultural identities. Each of these unleashes complex, painful consequences that can undermine cultural value or cultural safety.

In Mexico, a 12-year old boy walked onto the road to stare down an 11,000-strong anti-LGBTQ protest. In Italy, a small town has been revived by the arrival of refugees and migrants. In the US, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick has pulled the issue of police brutality into apolitical spaces, using symbolic gestures to draw out the history of racialised oppression. As Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine puts it, 'If you want to be right, be a pessimist, if you want to do right, be an optimist.'